The second largest home-solar installer in the country went into Chapter 11. This page follows the case in plain English, with the actual court papers and a guide for workers who are still owed money.
Case No. 26-10522 | U.S. Bankruptcy Court, District of Delaware | Filed April 15, 2026
Related employee suits: Adv. 26-50237 (Quinones) and Adv. 26-50238 (Kelley)
Updated July 28, 2026
$500M to $1B
Estimated debt
~1,600
Workers still owed
July 31
Sale hearing
Withdrawn
Stalking horse bid
Where it stands now
The sale is coming to a head. Bids came due Monday, July 27 at 5:00 PM Eastern, the auction was set for July 28 at 10:00 AM if anyone bid, and the sale hearing lands July 31 at 10:00 AM in Wilmington (Dkt 432), the same day the company has told the court its cash stops comfortably covering the case's costs. The docket does not yet say whether any qualifying bid arrived. No auction result and no cancellation notice has been filed as of this update, and the winning bidder, if there is one, must be named and served by July 29 at 4:00 PM Eastern. The company's banker reached about 90 potential buyers, but the company told the court on July 15 that no rival bid had surfaced, and the docket does not say whether anything arrived by the July 24 insider deadline. There is no floor under the price. Velera Energy LLC, the entity led by the company's own CEO, withdrew as stalking horse bidder on July 20 (Dkt 423), and the rules approved July 22 hand the creditors' committee a veto over any insider bid (Dkt 429). Sale approval itself sits with an independent consultant, Robert Pincus, whose formal retention application was filed July 24 (Dkt 439), and the list of contracts a buyer could take over is on file (Dkt 440). The claims register works out to about 1,398 creditors owed roughly $347 million once duplicated schedule lines are merged, and no claims bar date has been set, so the deadline to file a proof of claim has not started running.
Freedom Forever built rooftop solar across 35 states. Demand fell, money got tight, and a Texas investigation into solar sales added pressure. In early 2026 it cut about 20% of its staff and exited 10 markets, then filed for Chapter 11 in Delaware on April 15, 2026. It owes between $500 million and $1 billion and has told the court it does not expect funds left for general unsecured creditors once the costs of the case are paid.
Timeline
What to watch
The court approved the bidding procedures at the July 22 hearing, so the sale schedule below is now set rather than proposed. The dates hold unless the judge moves them, or unless a plan sponsor wins the auction, in which case the sale deadlines fall away and the case runs on a plan timetable instead. The signed order itself (Dkt 429) has since been read in full, and every date below matches it.
July 22 · done
The bidding procedures hearing was held in person before Judge Shannon, after moving twice to get here (Dkt 413, then Dkt 417). The court approved the rules for the sale, and the debtors filed the formal Notice of Sale that sets the sale hearing for July 31 at 10:00 AM (Dkt 432). Going in, the revised order had resolved all known objections but one, the U.S. Trustee's point about whether Robert Pincus must be retained as a professional under Section 327(a). The signed order (Dkt 429) has since been read in full. It approves the Pincus consulting agreement on an interim basis under Section 363(b), overrules any objection not resolved on the record, and the schedule below matches it exactly.
July 24 · passed
The deadline for any insider bid, three days ahead of everyone else, has come and gone. The docket does not disclose whether one arrived. If one did, the debtors had to hand a copy to the creditors' committee immediately, and the committee decides whether it counts at all.
July 27 · passed
The deadline for every other qualifying bid has come and gone. Bidders had to be all cash with a 10% deposit unless they held debt they could credit bid, and they could buy the assets outright or sponsor a Chapter 11 plan instead. The docket does not disclose whether any bid arrived.
July 28 · auction day
Two things were set for this morning, in order. At 9:00 AM ET the debtors were to name which bids qualify, and the committee decides whether any insider bid counts. The filing is explicit: if the committee does not deem an insider bid a qualifying bid, the debtors will not ask the court to approve that sale. At 10:00 AM ET the auction was to run, virtually, if there was anything to auction. Bidding moves in minimum steps of $250,000, and no bidder gets a break-up fee or expense reimbursement (Dkt 429). As of this update no auction result has reached the docket.
July 29 · 4:00 PM ET
The winning bidder has to be named and served by this point. The omnibus hearing that also sat on this day at 10:30 AM has been moved to July 31 and folded into the sale hearing session (Dkt 433), taking the final Sunrun order with it.
July 30 · noon ET
Deadline to object to the sale itself. The Pincus retention application shares this deadline (Dkt 439). One limited objection is already on file from Merchants Fleet, the company's vehicle leasing counterparty, over how its leases would be handled in any handoff to a buyer (Dkt 445). Objections about whether a specific buyer can be trusted to perform on a transferred contract get a separate, later deadline of August 4.
July 31 · the cash cliff
The heaviest day on the calendar. The sale hearing is set for this date at 10:00 AM (Dkt 432), and it doubles as the target closing. It is also the point the company has told the court its cash stops comfortably covering the case's administrative costs, which is why the whole schedule was compressed to land here. Any bid that closes later has to pay the wind-down and the extra administrative costs from August 1 forward. The omnibus hearing originally set for July 29 was moved into this same 10:00 AM session (Dkt 433). One caution from the signed order: the debtors may postpone the sale hearing without further notice to creditors, so this date can move (Dkt 429). Separately, objections to the fourth batch of contract rejections (Dkt 421) are due 4:00 PM ET.
August 4 · 4:00 PM ET
Last call to object to a contract being transferred to the buyer, or to argue the buyer cannot perform on it. The July 24 schedule lists every contract that could transfer, so counterparties should check their entry (Dkt 440). If a plan sponsor wins the auction instead of an asset buyer, the sale deadlines above fall away and the case runs on a plan timetable instead.
August 26 · 10:00 AM ET
Hearing on the fourth batch of contract rejections (Dkt 421), 13 back-office agreements including the Nearmap design platform and the employee assistance program. It is the first hearing date on the calendar past the sale endgame.
To be set
The claims bar date, the deadline to file a proof of claim. Watch your mail and the docket for this notice. It is the most important date for anyone owed money.
October 23, 2026
Mediation deadline in the Quinones WARN case (Adv. 26-50237), set in the company's own answer to the amended complaint. A class case like this usually settles in mediation, so for anyone owed wages or notice pay this is the date that matters most.
Ongoing
The two workers' class actions (Quinones and Kelley) and any plan that decides who gets paid. Nothing has been filed in Kelley since April, and the June stipulation in Quinones is captioned for both named plaintiffs, so the two look to be running as one case.
What a sale would mean
There is no offer in front of the judge (Dkt 423). Velera Energy withdrew as stalking horse bidder on July 20, and the company says it is not currently seeking to name a replacement. What a buyer would take on still matters, because the next one negotiates from the same position the last one did, and under the approved rules bids are due July 27 with the auction the following morning.
Who could buy it
With Velera withdrawn there is no bid on the table at all, so the question is no longer who tops the insider offer but whether anyone comes forward. Cascadia Capital's marketing reached about 90 potential buyers and 19 signed non-disclosure agreements to look at the books, and the company told the court on July 15 that no rival bid existed (Dkt 401). The likeliest buyer is SolarEdge, the equipment maker owed about $105.7 million and claiming a lien on nearly everything, which can bid with its debt instead of cash. Anyone else must bid all cash with a 10% deposit, either buying the assets outright or sponsoring a Chapter 11 plan that reorganizes the company. The business can also sell in pieces: the dealer network, the LIGHTSPEED software platform, inventory, and the warranty book could go to different buyers. If management comes back with a second insider offer, the revised rules now make the creditors' committee the gatekeeper on whether it counts as a bid at all.
What the price means for everyone owed money
Secured debt comes first: about $155 million, mostly SolarEdge and Tesla. Money reaches unsecured creditors, including workers above the $17,150 wage priority, only from value above that stack, or from knocking the liens down. The company has left itself room to try: its filings call the SolarEdge and Tesla liens "purported," and Tesla apparently never finalized the control agreement that perfects its claim on the company's bank accounts. If those challenges land, more of the sale price flows down to everyone else.
The withdrawn Velera offer, in detail
Buyer
Velera Energy LLC, a newly formed entity led by Freedom Forever CEO Brett Bouchy. Because the buyer was the sitting CEO, this was an insider bid.
What is sold
The ongoing servicing business, the software platform, and existing customer contracts, not the old debts or lawsuits.
Price
No cash to the general estate. Velera instead assumes about $34 million of SolarEdge's secured debt, up to $14 million of customer warranty claims, and $3.65 million of customer obligations.
Bid protection
None. The company is not seeking a breakup fee or expense reimbursement for Velera.
Timeline
The contract required closing by July 31, which is what moved the auction up. Those dates were built around this bid, and with it withdrawn the schedule was reset by the revised procedures the debtors filed July 20 and the court approved July 22.
What it means
It would have been reassuring without being a full backstop for homeowners. Servicing would have kept running and assumed customer contracts would have transferred, but Velera was taking on only a capped set of warranty claims, so guarantees beyond that would have become unsecured claims against the estate, alongside workers' unpaid wages. Any future buyer sets its own cap, so this is the shape of the risk rather than a settled outcome. The company told the court the deal would finish about 4,500 unfinished installs and save 250 to 275 of the roughly 260 remaining jobs (Dkt 401).
Who is owed money
Each dot is one creditor, sized by how much they are owed. After merging duplicate and co-obligor filings, about 1,398 creditors are owed roughly $347 million. Color shows either the legal class or the kind of creditor. Hover any dot for the name.
The money sits at the top. About 44 equipment suppliers (panels, inverters, racking) are owed roughly $157 million, the single biggest block. The two largest, SolarEdge at about $56 million and Tesla at about $22 million, are listed in the company's own schedules as secured, which would put them ahead of nearly everyone else in line. The company's filings elsewhere call those liens "purported," so expect a fight over it. Behind them sit two family trusts, the Albright Family Trust and the MA Legacy Trust, which filed in late June asserting about $62 million between them and claiming priority treatment for part of it. The hundreds of individuals, local vendors, and contractors are most of the dots but small ones.
Method & notes
Why isn't Mosaic here? The petition named Mosaic, a finance partner, as the largest unsecured creditor at about $60 million, but its claims are filed unliquidated, with no fixed dollar amount, so they can't be drawn as sized dots. About 1,108 of the 4,051 register lines are unliquidated the same way, which is why the finance partners look smaller here than the headline debt suggests. SolarEdge, at about $56 million, is the largest claim with a set amount.
Dot size is each creditor's total claim on a square-root scale, and creditors under $300k are shown at a uniform small size. Duplicate and co-obligor filings are merged, keeping the largest claim. The register carries 4,051 lines, but roughly 1,900 of those are duplicates created when the company filed an amended set of schedules, so the merged creditor count is the number that means anything.
On the legal class colors. A dot's class is the highest-ranking class that creditor asserts any amount in, and the dot is sized by their total claim, not by the amount sitting in that class. A creditor can split one claim across several classes, so do not read a large secured or priority dot as meaning the whole sum ranks that way. That is also why the class view shows creditor counts and no dollar totals. Worked example: the Albright Family Trust's $44.7 million claim colors as admin priority, but a direct query of the register shows only one creditor in that class asserting more than $1 million, and it is not the trust.
Creditor type (supplier, finance, vendor, contractor, government, individual) is inferred from the creditor's name, and the matching rules were rewritten on July 20, 2026. Type counts are therefore not comparable to earlier versions of this page. Source: Kroll claims register, pulled July 20, 2026.
For laid-off employees owed wages
If you worked for Freedom Forever and you are still owed pay, here is where you stand and what to do. This is general information, not legal advice.
The two class actions (the WARN Act)
Federal law (the WARN Act) requires large employers to give 60 days written notice before a mass layoff. Two groups of former workers have sued, saying Freedom Forever did not. Quinones (Adv. 26-50237) and Kelley (Adv. 26-50238, which also raises Nevada state wage law) each ask the court to treat all affected workers as a class and award up to 60 days of back pay and benefits. If you were part of the mass layoffs you may already be covered. Watch these dockets, and a class lawyer may contact you. You do not have to wait to be found.
Wages get partial priority
In bankruptcy, the first $17,150 per person in wages, salary, commissions, vacation pay, and severance earned in the 180 days before April 15, 2026 is a priority claim, paid ahead of ordinary creditors. Anything above $17,150, or earned earlier than that window, drops to a general unsecured claim. Contributions owed to an employee benefit plan get a similar priority within the same cap.
The hard part
The company has told the court it does not expect funds to be available for general unsecured creditors once the costs of the bankruptcy are paid. Priority wage claims sit ahead of general unsecured claims, so they are first in line among creditors, but if the estate runs short even priority claims can be cut down. How much workers actually recover depends largely on what the sale or auction raises. File anyway. You cannot be paid on a claim you never filed.
How to protect your claim
Gather your records: final pay stubs, your termination date, unused PTO, unpaid commissions, and any layoff notice you did or did not receive.
File a proof of claim through the official Kroll portal or with the court. Mark the priority portion (wages earned in the last 180 days, up to $17,150).
Do it before the bar date once it is set. Watch your mail and the docket for that deadline.
Keep your address current with Kroll so you receive notices.
Consider talking to an employment or bankruptcy attorney, especially about the WARN class actions.
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